Population Debate boils down to one, RIGHT! - Peter Wallace

Reference - Mr. Peter Wallace, 810-9606, 0918-9104001
Adviser, The Forum for Family Planning and Development
President, Wallace Forum

There’s been a lot written about population recently, much of it biased
and far too much of it emotional without caring much for fact, or even
for taking a reasonable approach.


For me it boils down to one overwhelming right, and that is the right to
information. In today’s modern world no one should be denied access to
the information they need so they can make an informed decision.

Whether you agree with the Church’s position or not I cannot agree to
its stance to deny information. People have a basic, inherent,
constitutional right to know. And the State has a constitutional
obligation to provide it.

Because you know what a condom is and what it’s used for does not make
you promiscuous, or desirous of using one – if your Church has told you
it’s sinful to do so.

Maybe the Church thinks its arguments are not strong enough so are
scared that once people are informed they’ll move away from its
teaching. In which case they need to learn to be more persuasive, to
have strong reasons people will accept.

If there are pills or injectibles that have abortificant qualities, they
can be banned, you just don’t have a blanket ban on everything because
one or two are unacceptable. You target.

One of the thorniest issues is that of the impact on the economy of
population growth. It is true you need a growing population to feed or
produce a growing economy, but they must be in reasonable balance. The
Philippines has a population growing faster than the economy can support
– as 8 ½ million Filipinos overseas can attest to. As 33% Filipinos
mired in abject poverty can affirm. Today there are 28 million Filipinos
in poverty (government figure) 30 years ago 18 million were.

Also about 30 years ago Thailand had the same population as the
Philippines 43 million. Today Thailand has 63 million – if the
Philippine population had grown at the same rate the GDP/capita would be
P21,500, not the 40% less P15,400 it actually is..

Thailand’s GDP grew an average of 6.1% per annum, here it was 3.3% so
that faster population growth didn’t stimulate the economy as some
claim